Cristian Bodnar

Cristian Bodnar is the cofounder and Chief Scientist at Silurian AI, based in London, United Kingdom. Before launching the Y Combinator-backed startup in June 2024, he served as a Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research, where he co-led the development of the Aurora foundation model for atmospheric simulation. He earned a PhD in artificial intelligence and an MPhil in Advanced Computer Science from the University of Cambridge, receiving the prestigious Microsoft Research PhD Fellowship in 2021. His academic tenure included specialized machine learning research roles across major technology firms, completing technical stints at Google Brain, Google X, and Twitter Cortex between 2019 and 2021. Bodnar currently focuses on advancing geometric deep learning and building generative foundation models that outperform traditional government agency systems like NOAA and ECMWF in global weather forecasting and complex Earth system simulations.